I guessed on Franco because he goes back the farthest among active hitters I believe, to 1982. And Katt pitched from 59-83, and Williams last season was 1960. Kaat is the only pitcher that overlapped both Williams and Franco from what I can tell. I have no idea if they ever faced Kaat though.

The active player, naturally, is Julio Franco, and the pitcher would be Jim Kaat. Williams batted against Kaat on the final day of the 1959 season (when Franco was 1 year old) and had two hits against him. Kaat walked Franco in 1982 when Julio was a rookie.

In other words, there is still an active player who faced a guy who faced Teddy Ballgame.

Easy with the HoF talk. Even if he played in the bigs for those years, and got the 500 or so hits he would need, there is no way he makes the cut. It is not a reward for playing 30 years in the majors. He has never been in the MVP race. He was never one of the top players in his era.

(i thought it was Baseball Reference, but i just checked and i couldn't find it) but somewhere there is a baseball variation of the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game - a search engine where you can type in two different players and get the players conecting the two of them....

Naturally, guys who play towards the middle of the century are the most-linked. I'd think it would help to play for a number of teams, also...and, looking at mid-century, even to play for 2-3 teams during the reserve system was probably a lot. Thirty years from now though...Franco is definitely at the top of the list.

Edited to note: The irony is that Gonzalez and Grady never actually played at the same time, as it was Juan's injury that paved the way for Grady to start on the team. Excluding Gonzo results in a Minoso-Brian Downing-Jose Hernandez chain.